


You are Part of a Machine

by willowoftheriver



Category: Dragon Ball, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Canon Divergence - Star Wars Expanded Universe, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Forced Marriage, I Don't Even Know, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Injury, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot Collection, Political Alliances, Pre-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Rape/Non-con Elements, Relationship Negotiation, Seduction to the Dark Side, Space Battles, Torture, Wedding Night, What Have I Done, i mean this is dead serious even though it's complete and utter crack, moral dissonance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: A tiny part of a way larger crossover AU I'll never get around to writing, wherein the Vong invade before Palpatine's death and he decides to marry Luke off to Vegeta to gain Frieza's support in the war against them.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker/Vegeta, Minor or Background Relationship(s), implied Vegeta/Frieza, mentioned Luke Skywalker/Mara Jade, vaguely implied Darth Vader/Firmus Piett
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. the weak ones are there to justify the strong

Luke, his hands clenched in his black—he had insisted they be black—wedding robes, looks at his new . . . well, not groom. Not husband. _New political ally_ is probably the most accurate thing to call him.

He’s shorter than Luke, which he likes. Very, very few people are shorter than Luke, and even though he knows, intellectually, that Vegeta is entirely capable of killing him—is _far_ more proficient in combat than Luke will ever be—it’s nice to be able to see the top of someone’s head for a change.

Vegeta’s tail is whipping back and forth in a jerky motion, and though Luke doesn’t know anything about Saiyans—hadn’t even known they existed, until a month ago—he thinks he can recognize a sign of stress when he sees it. Vegeta’s hard to read in the Force, though, even with Father’s additional training—there’s a lot in his mind that seems to be very bound up, twisted into a barrier that Luke can’t get past just by skimming across the surface.

“So,” Vegeta begins, reaching up to his head. With disdain, he rips off the coronet Lord Frieza had personally put there with much fanfare and fawning, clenching his fist around it. “Are you actually a virgin, _boy_?”

Vegeta is sixteen. Luke is twenty-three. If _anyone’s_ a boy—but, he can’t summon the anger, and not only because Jedi aren’t supposed to feel it. Because all he can think about is Han, and what it felt like for him to be on him, in him, from the thrill of the first time that came from doing something so new, so _illicit_ , with someone who was everything Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru would’ve disapproved of—to the last time, only a few days ago, where Han could touch him but not too much, not enough to leave marks, because he wasn’t his anymore. He wasn’t even his own.

The Emperor had sold his new ‘successor’ with pretty promises of his purity on his tongue, trotting him out in front of Frieza like an animal for inspection. (Luke had actually been relieved, _sososososo relieved_ , when the hideous, vicious thing had called for Vegeta rather than take him himself. _Who better for a prince than a prince?_ he’d said, with an ugly, sadistic glee Luke had never even heard from Palpatine. _And little Vegeta really is the closest thing I have to a child_.)

(A parent would never do this to their child. His father had done everything, _everything_ to stop it. But Palpatine had put him in a bacta tank for two weeks after he’d tried to kill him, and had laughed off his offer of taking Luke’s place with a _who would want an old, ruined, infertile thing like you, Anakin?_ and now there isn’t even a Rebellion to run to.)

(Palpatine told him, his hand on Luke’s cheek, fingers brushing strands of hair behind his ear, that he didn’t care how many people he’d fucked. But he had a role to play now, and until he sat where his new ‘master’ did, he would _make_ him play it, just like Palpatine’s own master had once made him play his. They all do their part, master to apprentice, master to apprentice.

But Luke’s _not_ his apprentice.)

“No,” Luke says bluntly. He hopes Vegeta is outraged, that he storms out, that—that—

Then Luke _regrets_ it, because if Vegeta _does_ do that, and the alliance this marriage solidified falls through, the Empire will be fighting a war on two fronts, both as impossibly bloody as the other.

And while Luke wants Palpatine to burn, to go down in flames like no one ever has before, the rest of the galaxy doesn’t deserve to go with him.

But Vegeta just nods sharply, unaffected. “I didn’t understand what all your master’s simpering about that was, anyway. Wanted to make himself look better, I guess.”

“Lord Frieza said the same thing about you . . .”

“Wanted to make himself look better,” Vegeta says again, with a tone like Luke’s slow.

Well. Luke doesn’t actually get what he means by that. “So . . . you’re not, eith—”

“How do you want to do this?” Vegeta demands, shrugging out of the heavy overcoat that’s embroidered with what, Luke’s been told, is the crest of the Royal House of Vegetasei. It hits the floor, leaving him in the stiff, sleeveless garment Frieza claimed to have picked out personally for his _little Vegeta_.

Luke swallows, burrowing deeper into the overlarge folds of his outer robe. “I don’t—you know, we—” He swallows again, decides to lie. He never specified the exact way he isn’t a virgin, after all. “I don’t even know what men do. With each other.”

Palpatine had asked him about that, and he’d lied to him, too. He wasn’t about to let him find out about Han. But Vegeta doesn’t buy it. “Oh, indeed? Well, maybe I’ll take my little _half_ virgin _bride_ on our next purge to educate him.”

At first, Luke’s confused by that. He knows what a _purge_ is, at least—had it explained to him in detail.

(“Frieza is an idiot,” Palpatine had said, idly tapping one yellowed fingernail against the electrum arm of his chair. “That’s why he’s just a _lord_ , instead of an emperor. One cannot rule ashes. But his obsession with indiscriminate destruction has left him with a military stronger than he has any business having. An army only has to practice genocide so many times before it becomes a proficient machine.”)

But why would the male soldiers be having sex with each other while—

Oh. _Oh_.

Not with each other.

“All different species, though,” Vegeta continues, like he hasn’t just said something so incredibly horrifying. “There aren’t any humans in the PTO at all.” He sneers, dropping his eyes below Luke’s waist. “You _do_ have the same reproductive organs as most mammalians, right?”

Luke’s fingers interlock protectively low on his abdomen. “I—I guess. I mean, I think so.”

(He thinks fleetingly of Mara Jade, with her beautiful gold-red hair splayed across the too-fine comforter of Luke’s bed. He’d come back to his suite in the Imperial Palace one night to find that image, because for all that Luke hadn’t thought Palpatine had believed his claims of total inexperience, it seemed like he actually _had_. Maybe his shields were better than he’d thought they were—or maybe he was learning to _deceive_ better than he’d thought he had, and no matter how useful the skill is, isn’t that still a depressing thought?

Whatever the case, Palpatine had sent him a gift to ensure he didn’t come off like too much of the backwater country bumpkin he is.

“My Master needs me to walk a fine line with you,” Mara had said, nudging her legs further apart. “He doesn’t want you to seem experienced, but he doesn’t want you to be surprised, either. Though considering I’m not a man, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult.”

And Mara had agreed to the Emperor’s instructions so unquestioningly, with such blind obedience. It probably would’ve been better for all of them if she’d been Vader’s child instead.

As it is, Luke had just blushed and averted his eyes and sent her away.)

Vegeta’s hands go to the ties at the back of his clothes, ripping at them carelessly, and Luke remembers how pretty a picture Mara had made, how _tempting_.

“We don’t have to do this,” Luke breathes in a rush. Vegeta’s hands pause. “We—it’s not like we can have a baby without medical intervention. If we ever even want to.”

Palpatine has no intention of that ever happening. He’ll use the Planet Trade Organization against the Vong, all the while hoping they destroy each other. And even now, as he smiles the same disarming politician’s smile he hid behind as Chancellor and takes tea with Frieza, chatting with him as warmly as if he were an old friend, he’s plotting what he’ll do should either group survive. And for all his unbelievable power, all of his physical strength, Luke doesn’t think Frieza stands a chance.

“Want,” Vegeta snorts. “I don’t know how your _daddy_ has pampered you, _Luke_ —”

Luke thinks the only time he’s ever heard his name spat with such vitriol is by Imperials who lost relatives on Death Star I. _Skywalker, Skywalker, Skywalker, Skywalker_.

“—but I think you’ll find that there won’t be much decided on what you _want _from here on out.”__

____

____

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” he grinds out. He could go on— _wants_ to go on, to use that word again. _Wants_ to tell him that the man he’s been forced to acknowledge—

(but _knows, always somehow knew_ —)

—is his _father_ doesn’t pamper anyone—wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word. Maybe he once had, but it’s all been burnt out of him.

Except he doesn’t, because he thinks saying all that would be what Palpatine would probably call _showing his hand_.

(“Relax,” Palpatine whispered to him, his hand a vise around his arm as he walked him down the aisle, his smile warm and serene and fixed in place. “Little Vegeta is a shark circling for blood in the water. Haven’t you noticed? Don’t give him any.”)

“But I’m not going to have sex with someone I don’t love.”

Vegeta frowns, narrowing his eyes and looking at him again like he’s _stupid_. “Love?” he says, and it sounds almost . . . genuinely confused. “What does that have to do with sex? With _anything_? It’s just a lie the _weak_ tell each other. The ones who don’t even deserve whatever it is they breathe. No—the only thing that matters in this universe is _strength_. The strength to take what you want.”

Vegeta eyes him then, his tongue darting out across the line of small, slightly too sharp teeth in the bottom of his mouth. For all that he looks like a human, there’s always been something a little bit _animal_ about him, beyond just the tail. And never more so than right now.

He smiles languidly, though his eyes stay cold. Cruel. “And it’s nice to be the strong one, isn’t it?”

Luke swallows convulsively, and the Force coils around his body like a snake ready to strike. _Insignificant_ , his father had said once—the Vong, the PTO, the Death Stars, so many destroyed planets and dead civilians and all of it, _all_ of it nothing compared to the power within his own body.

Vegeta’s a murderer, on a massive scale. But so is Luke, and it only took him one shot to do it.

“I know it is,” Luke forces himself to say, past the fear no amount of Jedi mental exercises can fight down. He can’t let himself look away from Vegeta’s eyes, because it seems like something in the room will _tip_ if he does, shift out from under his feet.

Instead he does something he thinks Palpatine might do, as much as he doesn’t want to consider it in that way, and reaches up to take off his own coronet.

No—no, not a coronet, really. More of a crown.

Palpatine doesn’t have one of his own. Says he doesn’t need one, that a Sith Master requires no grandeur and spectacle to be assured of his own power. That assurance was well met when he slew his master, when his apprentice cut down the Jedi in their own temple, when his own action and the wellspring of the Force inside of him left the galaxy on its knees before him, beaten and broken by his own hand.

But Luke? Well, Luke needed a crown that was bigger than Vegeta’s.

It’s not really spectacle, though. Not here, at least.

It’s . . . a reminder.

Jedi don’t hate, but Luke _hateshateshateshates_ Palpatine, has truly hated him since he had to spit on everything Obi-Wan had tried to pass on to him, fall to his knees and call him _master_.

But Palpatine won’t live forever, as much as it sometimes seems like he will. And one day, however much he personally might like it or not, Luke will sit where he sits.

Vegeta will never be able to do the same. He’s an uncoronated king of nothing and no one, under the thumb of an alien.

And Luke has the vaguest impression, perhaps Force-inspired, that Palpatine finds more use and value in him than Frieza does in Vegeta.

“Then I guess you’ll just . . . have to try to do what you think you have to.”

(Vegeta’s hand has tightened around his own coronet, tightened so much that the metal has bent, gemstones popping from their settings as it warps.)

Luke sets his crown down on the nearest surface with a delicate clink of metal meeting metal. Then he lies down on the bed, fully dressed and on top of the covers, rigid as a sheet of steel. He chose, purposefully, to face away from Vegeta, but _Force_ if it isn’t terrifying to not actually be able to see him.

There’s a too long, too quiet moment where Luke doesn’t really breathe, doesn't twitch. Then he bites the inside of his cheek as he hears Vegeta move, the rustle of fabric and the harsh clang of his coronet as it’s thrown carelessly onto the nearest tabletop.

“You probably wouldn’t have survived it, anyway,” the boy mutters with a derisive snort.

Luke has never thought of sex in terms of it being something to be _survived_. He doesn’t want to try to understand why Vegeta does.

Vegeta’s weight is negligible when he gets on the side of the mattress. It still seems heavy where Luke feels it, though, like it’s pressing directly against his back.

Vegeta sleeps like he’s dead all night. But Luke can barely even blink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy. Do I know what this is? Nope. Was it fun to write? Extremely. Luke and Vegeta are just such different characters, despite both having issues with galactic space tyrants. (Yep, I know, this is really self indulgent.)
> 
> I'm trying to imply throughout this that Vegeta's been sexually abused by Frieza, considering it's my personal headcanon. I have no excuse except that I just like to torture characters and give them gratuitous angst. At least I can say it's fairly popular fanon in parts of the DBZ fandom.
> 
> Was this largely inspired by the now entirely disgraced Game of Thrones? Yep.
> 
> The overall title is from "Gasoline" by Halsey, and the chapter title is from "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson.
> 
> -Anna


	2. no one man should have all that power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this take place before chapter one? After? Dunno. This is just a loosely connected one shot collection now exploring a few different moments from this universe.

A far too pleased, one-hundred-percent genuine _cackle_ comes over the comm, and six Vong ships blow up simultaneously. Four succumb to a mind-bogglingly complex shot that appears to break every law of physics and space that Han knows, and the other two just spontaneously combust with no explanation.

The comm goes silent, the fawning, concerned Imperial chatter conspicuously ceasing. Even Vader’s breathing seems to skip a cycle.

“I sense you have something to say, Vader,” comes Palpatine’s voice, and it's filled with even more creepy glee than usual.

Vader breathes a cycle, during which four Vong ships collide in a fireball after the ship they were chasing slips away at the very last second.

“Only that I was unaware that you had such . . . experience with flying, my Master.”

Han wonders if it leaves a bad taste in his mouth to have to call the bastard _Master_ even in casual conversation. Then he remembers he doesn’t care, because it's _Vader_.

Palpatine cackles again. That dignified, wise politician air the man usually puts on is very definitely a façade, just like Han had suspected. “Were you under the impression that you and my heir are the only talented pilots in the galaxy, Apprentice?” he asks, the question laced through with an underlying snide mockery.

There comes a small, tortured groan over the comm from Rogue Leader. However bafflingly well he tends to get along with Vader, Luke mercifully has nothing but cold disdain for Palpatine. He's never acknowledged any part of himself as being _his_.

“I was especially fond of it as a young man, before _other concerns_ took precedent. Though I would say the addition of the Force only enhances the experience, wouldn’t you, Vader?”

Two Vong ships suddenly, inexplicably _freeze_ in the center of the chaos, jerking only slightly as their momentum fights against whatever has caught them—and then, nearly instantaneously, they fly at each other, colliding into fiery debris.

There are, and always have been, wild rumors about Vader’s unnatural magic, even as far back as when Han had been in the Empire’s ranks. They say he's a mind reader, that he can break even the most willful prisoners by just ripping information from their heads and leaving them drooling, irreparably damaged husks. He can strangle a man to death without touching him even over lightyears, which is how he promoted that young Admiral he may or may not be fucking, depending on whether or not he's physically capable of it. (No one can seem to agree.)

Other whispers have him predicting the future with total accuracy and taking on twenty squadrons of Rebels alone, slamming five or six or seven men at time into the ceiling as though they weigh nothing, all with his mind. Supposedly he slaughtered every Jedi in the temple on Coruscant all by himself two decades ago, he has a cult of virgin priestess acolytes who serve him in complete devotion to the darkness, and he practices human sacrifice.

One story that has never been told about him, however, is that he's capable of reaching into the vacuum of space with his mind and altering the course of fully operational ships. The sheer power required to even _move_ something of that size, to halt its motion and shift _against_ it, changing the entire trajectory—

Luke had told Han that the Force is with Palpatine, but he hadn’t said how powerful he was. Maybe he hadn’t fully understood.

The Yuuzhan Vong are abominations from wild space—twisted, pathologically sadistic things that claw up and snuff out everything in their path. They’ve dragged billions down into a black, gaping maw that the Force can’t even penetrate, and whenever he and Han can catch a rare few hours of sleep, Luke has nightmares of _nothing_ , of _absence_ , of being the last creature in a universe where the Force has blinked out like a dead sun.

But Han doesn’t think he's dreaming about the right thing anymore.

The Vong are just a disease. Pointless and mindless and incapable of anything else.

They aren’t the real monster here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awwww yeah, look at me here getting that implied Vader/Piett in there. He spared him after he let his son get away, that's true love.
> 
> The Plagueis book says my boy Sheev was fond of speeders and shit when he was young. That was too much gold to not work in here.
> 
> Chapter title comes from a song by . . . sigh . . . Kanye.
> 
> Thanks so much for the kudos and comments!


	3. watch me get mine

Luke doesn’t think he’s been this dizzy since Bespin.

At least this time, he’s not clinging to life over a pit, losing the will to hang on more and more with each passing second.

He could almost say Mara looks _concerned_ , but he knows better than that by now. Still, the girl keeps glancing at him over her shoulder as they make their way, step by agonizing step, back to Luke’s rooms. She never offers to help him along, but she keeps her pace slow and when they finally arrive, reaches up herself to key in the door code.

(Luke hadn’t known she knew the new one, after he’d changed it following the pre-wedding incident. But of course she does.)

Her finger hesitates over the final button, and she almost seems to draw in a breath to speak. But she doesn’t, and the door opens with its familiar swish.

“See you at 0500 sharp, Farm Boy,” she says, turning on her heels and walking off with military precision.

Luke’s left hand claws around the doorjamb, muscles straining as he pulls himself along. One more step, two, three, four, his breath shallow, not enough, a painful tightness in his chest.

Then the smell of food hits him and makes it all worse, nausea welling up directly adjacent to the pain in his chest. The sound of three people chewing ravenously doesn’t help.

Vegeta only has two . . . attendants, if that’s even the right word. Really, they’re his only two remaining subjects, given they’re the only other living members of his species.

Right now they’re all clustered around a table, shoveling food into their mouths. Force, is that _raw meat_?

“What happened to you?” Vegeta asks, mouth full. He swallows it all down with a few gulps of some amber liquor straight from the bottle.

“Looks like the little flower has had his first real fight,” Nappa says, with a bark of laughter huge enough to match the rest of him.

Luke only stares at how they’re eating, sprawled out in their seats, their too-sharp teeth flashing as they chew with open mouths, tearing at their food with their fingers.

He wishes Nappa was right, but actually, that part of Luke’s training has been going smoothly so far. For all that he still is and always will be a _Farm Boy_ , as Mara calls him, one who never even threw a punch before he left Tatooine, even Palpatine says he’s taking well to a lightsaber.

No, his current state is the result of something much stupider, so much so he’s embarrassed Mara even knows about it.

Palpatine’s hosting this diplomatic dinner in a few days, see. There’s this planet a ways outside Imperial borders that’s rich in its mantle with some kind of ore Palpatine wants to get his hands on for the war effort. A few years ago and he would’ve just sent Vader and some Star Destroyers to take it by force, but that’s not an option at the moment—even Death Star II is otherwise occupied with planets amalgamated into the Vong.

So Palpatine’s resorted to an older set of tatics, ones he hasn’t used since he was pretending to be a kindly politician with the Republic’s best interests at heart. The ambassador and his? her? its? entourage from this planet with a name Luke can’t pronounce is going to be receiving the finest reception the Empire has to offer, a carrot before Palpatine inevitably introduces the stick.

And Luke isn’t going to fuck it up for him. Palpatine’s set out to make sure of that.

“By their culture,” he’d said earlier that morning, seeming to circle like some carrion-scavenging bird, “You, as heir apparent of the royal house, are to announce the formal start to the night’s meal. Something about symbolizing future good will—they’re all obsessively preoccupied with protocol and tradition, as a species.” There was a sneer in his voice.

 _Oh, like the Naboo?_ Luke thought, but thankfully didn’t say.

The language of these people isn’t designed for a human tongue, but Palpatine forces the words Luke’s to say into his mouth over and over again, the cane he doesn’t need striking the floor each time he makes him start over.

“The ancient records say Darth Revan could acquire some proficiency in a language in only a few conversations,” Palpatine said, sometime after Luke lost count of the repetitions and every sound from his mouth seemed to have lost its meaning. “I’m only requesting a _phrase_.”

“I’m not Darth Revan.”

“No. Yet you have the power to exceed her, if you only _tried_. Perhaps it’s wasted on you.”

Then there were the etiquette lessons, an endless array of forks and spoons and knives and other, alien utensils Luke’s never seen before, all of them to be used in the proper order and manner, never ever one out of turn lest he offend.

And all the while, that phrase over and over and over and over, but never _quite right_.

Finally, when his tongue was starting to stick to the roof of his mouth and he still didn’t exactly know the proper way to use the knife in his hand, he couldn’t take it anymore, all at once.

He threw the knife down in disgust, where it landed on his plate with a clang of metal, his words trailing off into a slurred jumble of meaningless sounds. He didn’t give a damn about putting effort into it anymore.

“I’m tire—”

Then Palpatine caught his wrist in the next instant and jerked his arm back with such force something in his elbow _popped_. His forearm twisted up at an unnatural angle and the rest of him followed along with it, body going up out of his chair on trembling legs to try to relieve the pain, but Palpatine just slammed his cane into his ribs to send him back down.

“You’re tired?” he mocked, voice sickeningly gentle. He kept increasing the pressure on Luke's arm with every word, every breath, bending it centimeter by centimeter back behind him. “Then I suppose we can resume this tomorrow.”

His arm cracked.

“And you’ll do it with your left hand.”

Not that Luke’s going to explain any of that to Nappa, or even Vegeta. _Especially_ not Vegeta. He really couldn’t even if he wanted to, because it’s all he can do not to scream.

The pain of losing his hand on Bespin had been intense, but the wound had been cauterized instantly and it had faded to a throb pretty quickly.

This is lingering, and agonizing, and the added pain of broken ribs means he can’t even really catch his breath.

(Palpatine intended that, of course. That fucking phrase he’s meant to say has to be done in one breath. Easy for the natives, given their bigger lung capacity, but not for a human.)

“Was it that hot little redheaded bitch you hang out with all the time?” asks Radditz, smirking. He rounds out the Saiyan trio, much closer to Vegeta’s age than Nappa. “Couldn’t you take her?”

Vegeta breaks a glass over his head. It hits home on his skull, even if it is insulated by his massive amount of hair. “And what about you, jackass? We’re in battle with a species that literally worships pain, but you’re still not even as strong as a _saibaman_. It’s a fucking disgrace!”

(Luke thinks that if he were one of only three living humans in the universe, he’d be a bit nicer to the other two.)

“I’m still stronger than _him_!”

“You’re a _Saiyan_!” Vegeta snarls. “Act like one! Get out of my sight!”

Radditz obeys, walking out of Luke’s rooms with his tail not quite between his legs. Nappa follows him, leering at Luke as he does.

Vegeta relaxes back into his seat, shoulders slumped. He eagerly clears his two comrades’ abandoned plates.

(Luke is acutely reminded of one of the first things Vegeta said to him, early on. _You’re just_ given _food?_ )

“Nasty break,” he finally says between chews. “Dislocated elbow, too?”

Luke just walks past him, off into the bedroom. He knows there aren’t any pain relievers anywhere in his quarters, not even mild ones. Palpatine never would’ve allowed it, so there’s no point in looking.

It was implicit that he’s meant to suffer through the night, come crawling back in the morning.

He desperately wants to reach out with his mind. All that power he never understood until recently is so easily at his fingertips, and he could call for Han, or Father—even overwhelm their minds until they feel his pain, too, if he wanted to. But he would never do that to them.

And Palpatine would notice, however he tried to hide it. Punish them for any comfort they’d give him.

Instead he sits down on his too-soft bed and tries to remember meditative techniques poor, dead Yoda taught him during those short few weeks on Dagobah.

(The galaxy had still seemed so bright then. The Empire had a massive bounty on his head but he was still so eager for the future.

He was still so ignorant.)

 _Breathe, breathe, breathe_ , slow, measured, deep breaths.

But he can’t. There’s no equilibrium he can reach, no peace within or without—the Force is whirling, writhing with his pain and he can’t get a hold over it however he tries. The trance state won’t come, pushed a little further out of his grasp with each pulse of pain in his arm and his chest.

“Who’d you piss off?” Vegeta asks. Luke can sense him there, where he’s followed him to the doorway of the bedroom. It’s not gotten much easier to read his emotions or thoughts, but his life force, Force signature, whatever anyone wants to call it, is very _present_ , despite him having no sensitivity to the Force. There’s something almost painful about it, too intense.

Luke takes one of his little shallow breaths, speaks in a very low voice. “Palpatine wants me to hate him.”

“You don’t already?” Vegeta scoffs. “You must be more of an idiot than I thought.”

(Of course Luke does. He _does_.)

“I _can’t_ ,” he hisses. “Even if I want to, it’s—it’s not the Jedi way. If I let myself hate him, I’ll go down a path that . . . I’ll—I might _become_ him. Become no better than him.”

“How lofty. Tell me, where are all these Jedi? You keep mentioning them, but you say your Master and your father aren’t ones, despite them having this . . . Force power. So why are you the only one I’ve ever seen?”

“They . . . I’m the last one. They’re all . . . gone.”

Vegeta stares at him for a beat, then laughs and laughs. “Oh yeah? And where did they go?”

“Palpatine outlawed them,” he says, hackles rising. “They—he _killed_ them all.”

(His father killed them all, down to the infants in the creche. Palpatine relished telling him all about it. But it’s still too painful for Luke to say, to even think too much about.)

“Then I guess their philosophy didn’t do them much good, to make them weak enough to be slaughtered.”

“And what about _your_ people?” Luke spits. He really has tried to be decent to Vegeta both before and after their sham of a wedding, if not exactly friendly, but his patience is finally gone. “They’re all dead, too! Were they _weak_?! Is that what you’re saying?!”

“ _Yes_!” Vegeta heaves a breath, the word hanging there in the sudden silence between them. “Yes,” he finally says again. “They were weak, _my father_ was weak, he allowed himself to be enslaved rather than _fight_ like a Saiyan should. Glorious death in battle is better to any Saiyan than life on your knees. But that’s not what he chose when Frieza came. So—so, _yes_! They all deserved what they got, just like your Jedi!”

Luke feels his first real emotions from Vegeta then, brief though they are. Pain, and shame, and a self-loathing so immense it makes Luke sick, more nauseated than the sight of his mangled arm could ever make him.

“You’re . . .” His dry tongue darts out, pointlessly licks his lips. “You’re allowed to miss them, you know.”

“Fuck off. Like you know anything about it. I’m only still here because I’m stronger than they ever were, and I didn’t get that way by not letting myself _hate_. Hatred has been my only painkiller more times than I can count.” He shoots a significant look at Luke’s arm. “It’s kept me going every time I’ve been hungry. And it’s what’s going to kill Frieza in the end.”

Luke can’t quite manage a scoff—his ribs won’t allow it. “You don’t have the Force. How could you possibly understand what could happen if I let myself be like you? I _can’t_ let myself hate him. Even if—even if I want to.”

Vegeta _does_ scoff. “You know . . . Frieza wants me to love him. And maybe, sometimes, I think it would be easier if I did. But I can’t lie to myself.”

He sneers at him, then turns on his heel and marches off.

Luke’s glad to be alone, to be honest, even though it also makes him feel a little bit desperate, overwhelmed, like he might cry. He tries to press a few fingers gingerly to his elbow, but the pain has him instantly ripping them away.

(Palpatine’s going to pull the whole arm straight in the morning, isn’t he?)

He can’t lie down comfortably so he scoots back against the headboard and just sits, unable to sleep or meditate or anything in between.

Instead his thoughts turn, involuntarily, to how he’d wished again and again to be with his father when he was a child. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had never been bad to him; he’d always been well cared for and even, in their way, loved, but he’d still looked around at the other children who had their parents and wanted _more_.

Only now, he thinks about Vegeta and all those emotions he glimpsed from him, and for the first time, he’s truly glad things worked out the way they did. Because he doesn’t know what he would’ve become if he’d gotten his wish. He doesn’t want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having too much fun with this.
> 
> Luke's on a long, slow road to the Dark Side. Whereas Vegeta's on a long, slow road to the light side, strangely enough. Thanks, Bulma.
> 
> Chapter title comes from 'So Long' by Everlast, which strikes me as being a very Vegeta-ish song.
> 
> Thanks for the kudos!!
> 
> Oh, and uh, no one will ever convince me Revan wasn't female.


End file.
